General Chat

When a lot of houses were council houses and the rent man would collect the rent weekly or fortnightly you could tell him of things that needed doing, he would tell his boss and it would be sorted, now you have to email or write to them, me thinks that is why some of the problems occur, litter being the main one, just my thoughts.
What do others think?

Negligently discarded face masks frighten me more than that big vicious dog next door.

I've noticed an increase in problems since the Council 'outsourced' the repairs and upkeep to contractors. :-|

About 2 years ago, I had a leak in my airing cupboard. This was, at the time, a small damp patch in the (very small) hall.
This could have been the boiler, or the hot water tank, both of which live in the airing cupboard.
When I phoned to report it. I was told by the young lad in the office, that the boiler and hot water tank couldn't be in the same place - despite my pointing out that I was actually looking at both, and they were both where they'd always been.

He 'deduced' it was the boiler. Men came out and 'fixed it'.
Damp patch increased in size - another call, more boiler men.
Another call, more men, damp patch now spreading along the ceiling, down the corner.
Another call, men came back - 'fixed' it - within a day, water streaming down the wall.

This went on for 2 weeks. Logic told me it was the hot water tank - bearing in mind, fiddling with the boiler was having no effect - but what would I know?
The boiler firm were making a fortune, thy wouldn't want to give up this little earner!

After 15 days, I phoned 'out of hours' (Council based)
Man came out, lifted the floorboards and confirmed it was the hot water tank.
Different contractors came around. I needed a new tank (No sh*t Sherlock!).
The tank would take a week to arrive!
I looked on line - informed them Screwfix had the right one - but no, they had to use their 'suppliers'.
Meanwhile, the water (still gushing down the corner) spread across the ceiling, and through the light fitting.

Called electrician - light was disconnected. Carpet was sodden. Ceiling came down.

Eventually had new Tank fitted.

Contacted Council about ceiling, light, damp plaster, sodden carpet, and the amount of time I'd had to take off work to allow workmen to do absolutely nothing about the leak.
I would have to wait for the plaster to dry out, then they would send in plasterer.
When the new plaster had dried, they'd repaint the wall.
I would have to claim off my insurance for the carpet. As for the time I'd spent off work - that wasn't mentioned!

A surveyor came round to assess the dampness of the plaster.
She suggested a de-humidifier to speed up the drying.
De-humidifiers use a lot of electricity, and are quite big. It would also block the area between the stairs, front door and living room door (also blocking access to the loo), there was also a missing light in this area.
I questioned the safety aspect of this, and was told 'At least we offered'!
My response was 'You offered to put me in danger, not only of not being able to get out of the house if there was a fire, but of falling down the stairs and accumulating a horrendous electricity bill'!

So, over 4 months after I reported the leak, it was 'fixed'.
My 'hall' and stairwell are painted white (I did it that year). Unfortunately, they used a different brand of paint, and left a tideline so I had to paint over their paint!
The carpet is man-made, so I put a couple of planks of wood on their side, under it, and it dried out okay.

Had this been proper council workers, they would have taken pride in their work, actually assessed the problem (like the 'out of hours' man did) and been responsible for their work, and answerable to a foreman!

maggiewinchester, my Dad had a similar problem but not as bad as yours but being a builder he told them exactly what the problem was and where it was, they ignored him to their cost in the long run. He needed the stair wall and landing wall repapered, new cistern and new stair carpet oh and toilet carpet.

:-(

I forgot to mention - the electrician, when he replaced the light fitting and put the lampshade back, he found he'd made the flex too long.
He opened the door to go out - the door hit the light, and broke the lampshade. :-| :-|
It was one of a matching pair - the other being at the top of the stairs.
I didn't bother complaining about that. By then, I'd had enough!

We lived in a Victorian house in south east London

Had been a long term rental since c1913 when mum was a youngster and the whole family moved from Hackney East London

Mum took over the tenancy when gran died

It was managed through a local estate agent and the rent was taken into them every Saturday .any repairs needed where reported and workmen would turn up to do repairs

Looked it up recently and it was sold several times after mum died in 1980 and the tenancy given up

Has now been carved into 4 flats each selling for over 250000 each

Such a shame because it was a beautiful house but each flat must be cramped :-(

We rented the ground floor of a Victorian house 1978 to 1980 it still had servants bells in the hall, if we could have got a mortgage we would have bought it, ironically the rent was £8:00 a week then but the landlord reduced it to £7:00 because we decorated it.

Yes ours had the servant bells on a big board

Also had what would have been the bell pull in some of the main rooms

We still had gas mantles too for a long time that could still be tuned on

Gradually over the years when dad wallpapered he removed the mantels and capped off the gas pipe work

Housing association put in a new bathroom and I wanted to supply my own tiles so i went upstairs and worked out how any I would need.

Tiler comes along and says he had better work it out himself (with the aid of his willy!) and, naturally he needed two more boxes than I had calculated.

Off I go to buy the tiles bring them home, he tiles the bathroom and i take the two extra boxes of tiles back,unopened for a refund!

Sharron, do you think it is because you are female and couldn’t possibly know such male things, years ago when our tumble drier was not tumbling and I told hubby what I thought the problem was he told me not to be silly it wasn’t that, upon taking it apart he realised I was right but wouldn’t admit it because he is an engineer, well excuse me for being the user. :-D

When we had our kitchen tiled we took measurements and the tile shop calculalated how many boxes we would need

Each box said would tile x amount of square metres

We had about 8 tiles over so I knew how many metres it has tiled

When settling up the tiler tried to charge me well over and I was nooooo you used x boxes so that’s x square metres so this is the cost

He was ohhhhh. Hubby said she is an accountant mate so knows what she is doing

He was ok and accepted the payment I had calculated! :-D

Oh Zzzz, of course it was because I was female. you can't not do nuffing wivout a willy!

I took my ca in for MOT, once upon a time, and was told they could not do the brakes because the discs wee so badly worn it was dangerous.Of course, stupid fat woman was not going to argue.

I told them to put it back together and I would do the discs myself!

Off to the scrapyard where the discs cost me more than I had planned because the man with whom I had been having the imaginary affair, like, one day he was going to get in my boiler suit but he never did, was away and his son was always more expensive.

Took the wheels off and there was no wear at all on the old discs.